When we went to the commissary to trade the last of our kredits for black bread, Gramps made me stare up at the reinforced walls that separated the Lower Belt from the rest of Irmat. With his sand-blasted voice, he said, “Tamra, listen to me. Here, no future exists. Here are only dead men walking. So you must live. Over there. Whatever it takes. Promise me.” My skin prickled with goose pimples. I imagined sinister men filled the other side, all behemoths. But I bit my lip, smiled like always, and said, “I promise.” Three days later, the attendants at the public crematorium shoved his mangled remains into a nondescript wooden box. He was only fifty-three.
Trudging through the monsoon rain, I clutched the battered tin can holding gramps’s ashes. Mud splattered the patched hems of my black linen frock, the thin fabric drenched and plastered on my frozen skin. From the shadowed eaves of the tenement building where we lived, unfamiliar faces, like ghoulish masks with narrowed coal-like eyes, watched. In the group’s center, a gnarled crone tutted. “Old man gone dead in the mine collapse. Pity that. Ain’t gonna last long, that one. Look at her. Can’t have had more than fourteen summers. The Enforcers gonna take her for sure.” They shook their heads, as if I were a mangy stray cat that was about to die.
I averted my eyes and shivered. My steps hastened to clamber up the rusted metal scaffolding-like stairs to the seventh floor and into the one-room hole-in-the-wall we lived in. I placed gramps’s tin can on the stool we used as a makeshift table. The place felt too big. Too empty. My stomach churned. The black bread ran out yesterday. A bright red notice wedged under the door demanded rent.
“Gramps, what should I do now?”
He wanted me to leave. I only thought to stay.
I grabbed a stained shirt from the floor. One of his from days before. Rancid sweat enveloped me as I buried my head in its folds. It was familiar. Safe.
I stood there until the rain stopped and the puddles of water I had tracked in dried up. If only I could stay that way forever. Outside, strangers crowded streets like wolves ready to pounce. But I needed a job to stay. Without it I would have no choice except to be pawned off like the Abandoned that littered the back alleys. Or worse. In the Lower Belt, there always was.
“Listen missy,” the wraith-like man cut me off. “There ain’t no place for little girlies here.”
I hung my head. I’d spluttered and choked my pleas to labour foremen, recyclers, scrap dealers, spindlers, and garbage collectors. Each time, my limbs shook, body half-paralysed between the urge to run and the need to stay. Most took one look at me and waved me off. Some didn’t even bother to glance.
A pockmarked hand grasped my arm. I jumped. Every corner, every shadow, and every screech of metal on pavement made me twist and turn, convinced hulking figures came to take me away.
The hand pressed a hunk of stale bread into my sweat-slicked ones. “Off you get. Don’t be looking in these parts again.”
I nodded, the unfamiliar touch nauseating.
By sundown, I trundled up the stairs to my hole-in-the-wall. The old crone stared from behind taped-up glasses, wrapped up in a hooded patchwork shawl. Each passing day, her smirk widened as though she knew some secret that no one else did.
Then, dawn four days later, a sharp rhythmic thud reverberated up the narrow alleys in an unstoppable tide. I peeked through the only window in the room. Below the tenement stood three men in black plated anoraks and sabatons, the material absorbing instead of reflecting light. I trembled. These monsters disguised as men had come at last.
Enforcers.
Metal boots clanged against the stairway steps. Each tremor rattled my bones. Word was everyone they caught disappeared, turned to lifeless puppets.
My hands brushed gramps’s tin can, maybe for the last time ever. Then I bolted.
I clambered onto the roof. Recent rains made the tiles slip and slide under my feet. Sharp edges sliced my skin. I didn’t stop. I scrambled to the ledge. And jumped onto the next. Roof after roof. My legs throbbed. My breaths grew ragged. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as if it might burst any second. I couldn’t slow down. Thundering footsteps echoed behind me like pistons.
Eventually, the tenements gave way to one of the wider lanes the mining wagons used to transport minerals from the Outer Districts to the depots near the wall. I skidded to a stop at the edge.
A ten-storey drop was death. My jaw clenched tight. This can’t be it. Can it? Then—there, running down the building’s side was a metal drain pipe rusted from years of rain and neglect. I hooked my feet around its paper-thin body and slid down. Faster. And faster. Until—
Riiipp.
Two-thirds of the way, the pipe snapped. My stomach dropped. Momentarily weightless, my body tumbled mid-air. Then, a dull crunch as pain exploded like wildfire from my left shoulder. I screamed. Blood dripped down the white bone jutting out from a now useless arm.
Despite the blinding pain, I couldn’t linger. I hobbled out on to the lane.
A high whiny split the morning air. Hooves reared above me. I fell. Hard. The crack of a whip rang clear above the sound of wheels thudding to an abrupt stop.
From inside a plain black carriage, a woman’s voice called out. “What’s the matter, Mechus?”
“Some gutter brat walked into the path of the horses, madam. I’ll clear it up right away.”
A heavyset man climbed down from the driver’s seat. He held in one hand a leather whip with a lash at the end. The veins of his fist bulged. The image of gramps’s mangled remains flashed before my eyes.
Behind me, the Enforcers. In front, Goliath. I curled into myself. Heavy blows rained down on my back. Fist and whip flayed my flesh. I whimpered.
“Please…”
“Let me see, Mechus.”
At her softly spoken words, he stopped. Through the blood dripping down my eyes, I watched her alight from the carriage. She wore black as if in mourning. She carried herself with a straight back and held a cane topped with a carved golden lion. In a place where the only way to get kredits was hard labour, no one would spend what little they had on something that didn’t fill their bellies or clothe their backs.
She strode over and stared down at me, perfectly shaped eyebrows arched. I turned my eyes away. My mouth tasted like old socks. The urge to recoil from the unfamiliar face suffocated me and threatened to swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. Gramps said to live.
“Please…”
“Please, what?” She spoke as she might to a dog.
“Please…take me…with you.”
She bent down and cupped my chin. I quivered. She forced me to look her in the eye.
“Why should I?” She scoffed. “What are you willing to offer me?”
After my broken arm healed months ago, the madam dragged me to service her and her friends. Bedecked in feathers and lace, she beckoned me as I entered. Walking across, I suppressed the shudder at the sight of so many nubile and barely clothed strangers. She pointed to her feet. I bent down, thankful I didn’t need to face any of the others. At least not this time. She placed her feet on my shoulders as I lavished her body with caresses and kisses. Not one of the other ladies batted an eyelash at the sight. Instead, one of the younger socialites fanned herself and commented.
“Madam, you are truly blessed. It has been just ten months since your late husband died in that ghastly mine collapse during his inspections of the Outer Districts. Now, you may very well be the first of us to be elevated to the Upper Belt.”
Fear slithered down my spine. Here no future existed. Only slavery and a revolving door of strangers. A warm breeze blew in from the open windows. Looking out, I yearned for the shadow of the wall and the Lower Belt beyond it.